cut the cord
by Ivory Muse
Summary: Fathers and sons are complicated even at the best of times. This isn't exactly the best of times.
1. back and forth

Every Friday, you've got a tradition. You drag Sheldon, your terrifyingly clever and terrifyingly bratty son, to George Jr.'s game. He spends it complaining under his breath (or over his breath). You spend it two inches away from slapping him upside the head, feeling as though since the hunting trips, the fighting lessons, and the poker all fell through, he could maybe stop making you feel like you've wasted your every paternal effort.

You love Sheldon- you _do_\- but sometimes (always) that isn't enough. Love won't pay his college tuition or teach him field theory or erase the fact that he's an eleven-year-old robogeek with the mind of Einstein and the maturity of a toddler, and neither will football, but at least football you understand.

"This is _puerile_," Sheldon protests, a broken record. He's tiny in George's old sweatshirt, and the wind has long since made his hair a rat's nest. "Why, exactly, do you want to spend hours of your life surveying a hoard of sweaty athletes ramming into each other?"

You take a surreptitious swig from the whiskey bottle you'd stashed beneath your coat, just for, um, emergency purposes. "Fun?"

Sheldon snorts. "Right. Fun. Can I go home and do my calculus homework now?"

It's pretty obvious that the kid hates you. The way he looks at people alone, like he's Jesus fucking Christ himself back to judge, is enough to flay you, but you refuse to budge an inch. Mary already coddles him far too much as it is.

No, you want to say, you're his father and he'll mind if he doesn't want his ass whipped, goddammit. But you know exactly what kind of response that'll get. "Your mama told you to come," you say instead. The boy loves his mother. Ashamed as hell of the rest of you, but he loves his mother.

"Mama wanted me to support my siblings," he clarifies. "Missy attends art class. Why couldn't I go with her?"

"Because you're a man, not a fag," you snap, the last of your patience well and truly gone. Shit, he'd drive anyone to drink. "Now are you gonna watch the game?"

"Yes," he mutters, looking distinctly put out.

"Yes, what?" you insist, just to keep up the charade that your youngest has the tiniest shred of respect for you.

"Yes, _sir_." The honorific has a tinge of sarcasm attached, and he slumps further in his seat.

"The hell are you so eager to do your homework for, anyway?" You can't remember a single instance in your miserable academic career where you'd had the desire to sit down with a worksheet on a Friday night, or any other time. Not one.

"Calculus," he answers primly, "is the foundation of theoretical physics. If I master multivariable-"

God, you'd forgotten that when you give Sheldon a prompt he likes, he won't ever let go of it. Boy talks and talks and talks whether he has a willing audience or not, so you halfway pretend to listen while he jabbers on.

(You've got to take your time with Sheldon, you told a frazzled Mary a lifetime ago. You've got to take your time with Sheldon. So he won't toilet train or eat anything that hasn't been thoroughly vetted for germs first or really _speak_ to anyone who isn't his bespectacled scholar of a pop-pop, it doesn't matter, you reassured. The kid had been kind of cute then, like a walking encyclopedia on crack. Don't worry, he'll grow up, you told her, smooth out. Become more normal.

That was before she took him to some fancy specialist in Houston who said that Sheldon had the highest IQ he'd ever seen.)

You observe your son- your firstborn son, the only one you can claim to know. He's a good quarterback. Not the sharpest strap in the shed, but a damn good quarterback.

Final touchdown, delivered by none other than George Cooper, Jr, and the stands erupt with cheers. A little shakily, you clamber to your feet, pull an unwilling Sheldon up. "That's my boy," you shout, loudly informing the spectators of the fact that _your_ genes were responsible for Galveston's victory.

"You saw that, Dad?" George asks after the team celebratory huddle, cheeks glowing. "Hey, runt," he adds snidely towards his brother. Sheldon scowls.

"You're damn right I saw that. The way you intercepted the last pass-"

Sheldon irritably tugs your sleeve. "They won. _Now_ can I go home and do my calculus?"

The kid hates football, you realize- or, more like you realized that from the first match you ever made him watch and are only now admitting it to yourself. The kid hates football and he hates you, and he hates these attempts at making a man out of him. He can recite every great sports victory from the past five years but he no more appreciates it than he appreciates Arabic. Fuck, you're beginning to feel a profound sense of distaste towards him, this smug, superior creature you fathered. What right does he have to condemn you, a child who has to have the right breakfast cereal each morning lest he wage an unholy tantrum re: proper fiber content?

"Yeah, sure," you finally dismiss with a casual wave, turning your attention back on your eldest. He can walk, and if he leaves, maybe you can take George to the bar for dinner without having to hear his smartass remarks for a change.

He looks like you did in high school, George- same wavy brown hair, same strong jaw, same lean, muscular figure. Plays great football, most popular guy in the junior class. A new girlfriend on his arm every week. Beer and shotguns and reckless driving. At least you can say this one lived up to your expectations.

(The only thing you dealt Sheldon was his electric blue eyes, eyes that see all of you for what you really are. It does not bother you, it does not bother you.)

"So, Mr. High-And-Mighty's gone," you say, clapping a hand on George's shoulder, as if Sheldon had been there of his own accord. "Come on, give me the details. How hard did you make those bitches from Beaumont cry?"


	2. interlude

_okay... so this is kind of an out-of-order weirdly stylized drabble i took from a longer sheldon fic i'm writing, the third law of thermodynamics. for just a regular nerd, who wanted fatherly concern in trying circumstances- this is set maybe a couple of years before the last chapter?_

* * *

(get up, dammit. his father is kind of drunk- again- and his vowels are slurred as if he's talking through molasses.

he rises reluctantly from his physics textbook. physics makes so much _sense, _a stark contrast to the cooper family. dad? he ventures.

turn around, let me see your nose. sheldon does so, revealing the crusted blood, the purple bruises under his eyes. who the fuck did this?

david. he lives across the street.

he doesn't ask why. he probably already knows and doesn't want to. hold still, he commands instead. he takes a damp washcloth out of nowhere and swipes sheldon's face with uncharacteristic gentleness, with perpetually shaking hands. you just stood there, huh?

it was the most logical option, sheldon protests, pride stung in spite of himself. he's three years older than me. i'd have only encouraged further battery if i had struck him.

coward coward coward. i didn't raise you to bend over and take it up the ass from the neighbor boys, he mutters darkly, even if it's 'logical'. next time you throw a punch at the little bastard, you hear me?

he isn't going to do it, but he nods to placate him. his father puts a warm, callused palm on his head and ruffles his hair, pacified by the meager display of masculine fortitude; pneumonia, salmonella, rhinovirus, and he arches into the rare touch anyway.)


	3. foaming at the knees

Sullenly, you walk home, away from your victorious brother and your crowing father (who has never looked at you the way he looks at George.) Away from the good people of Galveston, who let their entire social lives revolve around the football team and treat the players as demigods. Away from the horrible flashing lights and loud noises that make you want to curl up in a ball beneath the stands until the world grows quiet.

It's not fair, you think as you kick at a stray pebble, the mantra of all childhoods and especially yours. You didn't ask to be born into this family, into this backwater town with nothing but Jesus and whiskey and guns. And you sure as hell never asked to come to those games, either, just like you never asked to learn how to deep-fry meat or shoot a raccoon or break someone's jaw in a single blow.

He's proud of George's mediocrity, and though you've told yourself a thousand times that you-don't-care what such an inferior intellect thinks, jealousy still burns in your gut like acid. He shows up to all of his stupid football games and drags you with him to 'provide moral support', while you can't remember him ever showing the slightest interest in your activities. No, it's 'watch the game before you do that cal-cu-lus thing', 'remember that women are fucking pains in the ass, Sheldon', 'you're a man, not a fag,' when he deigns to speak to you.

You miss your pop-pop, lately. He knew you were special, upper echelon, and made sure you knew it, too. You've got a gift from God, Shelly, he'd said, and despite your already burgeoning atheism at age five you'd gladly accepted the compliment. Pop-Pop would've been at every science fair, every symposium— except now he's six feet under and nobody could care less about you. Never says, wow, Sheldon, papers in peer-reviewed publications on m-theory? And you aren't even twelve yet? Do you realize that you could revolutionize particle physics, have a Nobel prize in your hands by thirty? Your second-grade teacher thought that you were a clear case of demon possession and begged Mama to take you in for a exorcism. All the other children either shove your head down toilets or pretend you have the plague- not that you've got any desire to associate with those simpletons. Your entire family, with the notable exception of your mother and meemaw, thinks that you're a disrespectful brat in desperate need of a good licking (Dad, Uncle Earl, Grandpa Cooper) or a geeky runt ripe for teasing (George, Missy, every single cousin). You think you've earned the right to a little self-pity.

(Pop-Pop went to Jesus, they told you. You hate Jesus. You hate Jesus more than you've ever hated anyone.)

It doesn't matter, you tell yourself fiercely, what this pack of imbeciles thinks, because you're going off to college next fall— University of Texas, Austin has already sent an acceptance letter for possibly their only eleven-year-old freshman, attracted by your work with lasers in particular. (You wish you could go farther, to California (Caltech) or New Haven (Yale) or Boston (MIT), but Mama put her foot down— no son of hers will live in heathen territory before he's even old enough for a driver's license.) You've been practicing your elocution, eliminated the 'y'all's and southern drawl from your speech in a frenzied desire to appear erudite; every night, you count down the days on your Wesley Crusher calendar, stringing them like pearls. May, June, July, August... and then you will be amongst your own kind at last.

For now, you have your calculus waiting for you, as you shove open the porch door and enter your cramped little house. You love calculus— it never changes. Calculus is not dependent on the whims of a bourbon bottle, or an alternately merciful and malevolent deity. And you have every intention of beating a hasty retreat to your room, working out a new theorem in the confines of your head, but then you notice a light inside the kitchen and the rich smell of chocolate.

"Meemaw?" you call, pulling off your shoes and padding over to the dining room table. Just the sight of her, grey hair and floral print and your mother's kind eyes, is like a warm blanket wrapped around your permanently hunched shoulders.

"Come on in," Meemaw says warmly, putting aside her knitting needles with a loud clack. "I made brownies, special just for you."

You fake a smile as you sit down beside her. The fakeness of it doesn't escape her steady gaze, though, because you are absolutely terrible at facial expressions. "What's going on in that big head of yours?" she asks, taking your hand in hers. "Did your daddy do something stupid again?"

This is what you love about Meemaw— she says whatever enters her mind, the same way you do, and the general unworthiness of your father is frequently at the forefront. "Yes, but there's no need for you to concern yourself," you tell her, and pluck a hot brownie off the plate. "This was the last football game of the season, and now I can do my calculus homework in relative peace. So long as that Tesla-inspired death ray I built still functions properly and keeps Missy from my bedroom—"

"You're ramblin' again, Moonpie," she cuts off, a knowing look on her withered face. "Listen, you pay him no mind. If the whole world was made up of George Seniors, we'd be in a right sorry state, and don't ever let him tell you otherwise."

"It's nothin'— nothing," you say, frowning at the almost dropped end.

Meemaw notices. Meemaw always notices. "Don't be so ashamed of comin' from this place when you go off to college, baby," she says softly. "I know it hasn't been real kind to you, but you're gonna prove anyone in Houston or California or New York wrong so fast their heads'll spin if they think you're some dumb hick, you hear me?"

(Why shouldn't you be ashamed? There's nothing for you here. But when you go away to college, no one is going to tell you that you're not good enough for them again. You're twice as strong and smart as the sorry denizens of Galveston, and once you're at college, you'll have all of the power in the world.)

"Do you want to see my new paper?" you ask instead. "It's about monopole variations. I'm sure you'll like it."


End file.
